Monthly Archives: September 2014

“Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow is a 2010 Sophie Fiennes documentary about the German industrial artist Anselm Kiefer’s creation of a gesamtkunstwerk in an abandoned factory complex outside Barjac, France.”

Ibn Khaldun’s account of his interviews and encounters with Timur outside Damascus in 803/1401 is taken from the autobiographical section of his monumental historical chronicle, the Kitāb al-‘Ibar. It is an invaluable piece of history which provides an important contemporary account of the conqueror Timur. It also brings together two of the most significant historical personalities of the late fourteenth century, one being a world conqueror and the other a first-class intellectual. These two figures conversed about topics including the topography of North Africa, the reliability of Tabari’s history, the nature of the caliphate, and Ibn Khaldun’s own theory of group solidarity (‘asabiyya). There are also many important tidbits of historical information provided within the text, especially with regards to Ibn Khaldun’s discussion of the expectation among astrologers and mystics in the fourteenth-century Islamic West that the conjunction of planets would announce the arrival of a figure…

On a September evening in 1974, Yılmaz Pütün was arrested for murdering a local judge at a seaside Turkish casino. An argument between Pütün’s table and the judge’s had quickly escalated to the point where Pütün had pulled out a gun and demanded everyone sit back down. When the judge confronted Pütün, demanding the gun, Pütün knocked him down. According to witnesses, the judge grabbed a chair and approached again. At this point Pütün shot him. Nearly two years later, when the trial finally concluded, Pütün was found guilty and sentenced to nineteen years in prison. Appearing in court, Pütün was often greeted by cheering crowds.[1]

Few, if any, of these supporters were cheering for Yılmaz Pütün, a thirty-seven year old native of Adana, however; they were applauding Yılmaz Güney, “The Ugly King,” one of Turkey’s most popular actors. Already famous internationally, Güney’s notoriety would grow in the…